1 MUSEUM SELF - TRANSFORMATION … The Museum Building Itself is The New Permanent Exhibit Golden Oldy Cyclery and Sustainability has its roots in bicycle history. It now has a broadened mission spawning a New Permanent Exhibit which: Projects a message for the times. Cuts energy utility bills to negative numbers, Cuts carbon footprints to less than nothing, providing carbon sequestration! Requires no new galleries for its containment … the new gallery structures (as well as updated old gallery structures) are the exhibit. Marshall McLuhan is famous for his line: “The Medium is the Message”. This living exhibit extends the concept of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s winning 2012 Brooking Paper, demonstrating sustainability. To differentiate this effort, it is intermural and permanent as opposed to Cleveland’s
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MUSEUM SELF - TRANSFORMATION … The Museum Building Itself is The New Permanent Exhibit
Golden Oldy Cyclery and Sustainability has its roots in bicycle history. It now has a broadened mission
spawning a New Permanent Exhibit which:
Projects a message for the times.
Cuts energy utility bills to negative numbers,
Cuts carbon footprints to less than nothing, providing carbon sequestration!
Requires no new galleries for its containment … the new gallery structures (as well as updated
old gallery structures) are the exhibit.
Marshall McLuhan is famous for his line: “The Medium is the Message”. This living exhibit extends the
concept of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s winning 2012 Brooking Paper, demonstrating
sustainability. To differentiate this effort, it is intermural and permanent as opposed to Cleveland’s
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extramural and temporary exhibit. This exhibit is the purposeful conversion of the Museum’s own
building (McLuhan’s “medium”) beyond PassivHaus energy standards to become “Carbon Negative” and
“Energy Positive”. The museum even achieves “Power Plant” status shipping dramatic volumes of
surplus power to the grid.
Happily, many museums have started on the trail to sustainability. In Colorado, the Denver Zoo, Denver
Botanic Gardens, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS) have begun important
efforts. This trail to Sustainability is not short. It takes perseverance and commitment to pursue it to the
required result. The Golden Oldy intention is to elevate the bar to the necessary level for our eco –
circumstances reflecting, in the words of The Late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “the fierce urgency
of now.”
Housed in a 1970s residence, the Golden Oldy structure was built to the period’s poor energy efficiency
standards. The energy goal for this new permanent exhibit was to go far beyond “Net Zero” energy
consumption, while embracing (and satisfying) new extra-mural energy needs (transportation, food
production). The target audience encompasses both: 1) museum patrons and 2) the broader museum
community. This latter audience is important; it can potentially act as a megaphone spreading the message
through many “Action pulpit” museums worldwide, recognizing that “actions speak louder than words”.
We are past a point where we can afford to project the message “Do as I say, not as I do”.
Museums are constrained to meet their missions while operating within budget and doing “no damage”. It
is not traditional to consider a museum as a perpetrator of “damage” or “harm”. However, the built
environment has been credited with producing 70% of greenhouse gases globally. Museums have the
chance to go beyond being “Thought Leaders” to be “Action Leaders” setting very visible & lasting
operational examples of “good”. “If you are not part of the Solution, You are part of the Problem”….
Eldridge Cleaver.
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The Key Issue of Our Time is Climate Change. This is an “Inconvenient truth”. Left unchecked, the
coming natural holocaust will make all past holocausts pale. It will be non-sectarian. However it will be
economically and geographically discriminatory. This threat, unlike the 9-11 attack, and wars based upon
Nationalism, Religion, Sectionalism, Ethnicity or simple Ego/Greed comes slowly and acts continuously,
like the proverbial frogs warming pot on the stove. Its urgency cannot be seen from inside the system
without careful studies of volumes of data. Hence, there are many who deny.
Western civilizations and America particularly, grew up with a wealth of fossil fuels powering their
development. That abundance created ongoing “Business As Usual” expectations, without any:
Appreciation of the value or
Comprehension of the risks.
This blind deferral of consequences made short term planning seem “profitable” while the frog’s pot
slowly warmed.
The Grand Threat is that climate change will devastate our economy, society, and citizenry with droughts,
floods, super severe storms, & rising and acidifying seas. The current state of atmospheric degradation is
extreme. Greenhouse gas concentrations have grown from the 280 PPM CO2 level of the Holocene to the
current 400 PPM. This (if not reversed) will raise temperatures far more than 2 degrees Celsius, causing
dramatic melting of continental (Greenland and Antarctic) ice sheets, flooding vast coastal areas. At the
same time, desertification is spreading, reducing food production potentials for the growing world
populations. Famine & massive civil unrest cannot fail to follow.
The year 2012 showed us: Super Storm Sandy, Extreme Colorado Wild Fires, Major Crop Failures,
America’s Historically Highest Temperatures, and Dramatically Rising Food Prices. These are just local
examples of the consequences of messing with Mother Nature. See: